*TO THE ARTICLE "POLITICAL STRIKE
AND STREET STRUGGLE IN MOSCOW."
[October 10-12, 1905]
The article
"The Bloody
Days in
Moscow"
appears in print for the first time.
It was written by Vladimir Ilyich
on October 10 (September 27), two days before he wrote an article on the same
subject, published in *Proletarii* No. 24, from October 4 (September 21),
1905, "Political Strike and Street Struggle in Moscow," the plan of which the publisher prints below.

a.

THE BLOODY DAYS IN MOSCOW.

Geneva, October 10 (Sept. 27) [1905].

A new outbreak of workers' uprising — a mass strike and street struggle in Moscow. In the capital on January 9, the first thunderclap of the revolutionary action of the proletariat rang out. The reverberations of this thunder swept across all of Russia, raising more than a million proletarians with unprecedented speed to gigantic struggle. After Petersburg came the outlying regions, where national oppression had sharpened the already unbearable political yoke. Riga, Poland, Odessa, the Caucasus became in turn centers of uprising, which grew in breadth and depth with each month, with each week. Now the movement has reached the center of Russia, the heart of the "truly Russian" provinces, which had pleased the reactionaries most of all by their stability. A whole series of circumstances explains this comparative stability, i.e., the backwardness of central Russia: less developed forms of large-scale industry, which engulfed enormous masses of workers, but less severed them from the land, less concentrated the proletariat in intellectual centers; — and greater distance from abroad; — and the absence of national antagonisms. The workers' movement, which had manifested itself with such mighty force in this region as recently as 1885-1886, seemed to have died away for a long time, and the efforts of social democrats were shattered dozens and hundreds of times against the resistance of particularly difficult local working conditions.

But finally the center too has begun to stir. The Ivanovo-Voznesensk strike demonstrated an unexpectedly high degree of political maturity among the workers. Ferment throughout the entire central industrial region had been continuously intensifying and expanding after this strike. Now this ferment began to break out, began to transform into uprising. Undoubtedly, the outbreak was further sharpened by the revolutionary Moscow student body, which had just adopted a resolution completely analogous to Petersburg's, branding the State Duma, calling for struggle for a republic, for the establishment of a provisional revolutionary government. The "liberal professors," who had just elected a most liberal rector, the notorious Mr. Trubetskoy, closed the university under pressure from police threats: they feared, by their own account, a repetition of the Tiflis massacre within the university walls. They only hastened the shedding of blood in the streets, outside the university.

Insofar as we can judge from the brief telegraph reports of foreign newspapers, the course of events in Moscow proceeded along the "usual" path, which has, so to speak, become the norm since January 9. It began with a strike of compositors, which quickly grew. On Saturday, October 7 (September 21), the printing offices, electric streetcars, and tobacco factories were already not working. The newspapers did not come out. People were awaiting a general strike of factory and railroad workers. In the evening, large demonstrations took place in which, in addition to compositors, workers of other trades participated, as well as students and others. Cossacks and gendarmes dispersed the demonstrators many times, but they gathered again. Many police were wounded. The demonstrators threw stones and fired revolvers. A heavy officer commanding the gendarmes was seriously wounded. One Cossack officer was killed, one gendarme, etc.

The bakers joined the strike on Saturday.

On Sunday, October 8 (September 25), events suddenly took on a menacing character. From 11 o'clock in the morning, gatherings of workers began in the streets — especially on Passion Boulevard and in other places. The crowd sang the Marseillaise. Printing offices that refused to strike were destroyed. The Cossacks were able to disperse the demonstrators only after the most stubborn resistance.

In front of Philippov's shop, near the house of the governor-general, a crowd of about 400 people gathered, mainly baker apprentices. The Cossacks attacked the crowd. The workers penetrated into houses, climbed onto roofs, and showered the Cossacks with stones from there. The Cossacks fired at the roof and, being unable to dislodge the workers, resorted to proper siege. The house was surrounded, a police detachment and two companies of grenadiers made an outflanking movement, penetrated the house from behind, and finally occupied the roof. 192 apprentices were arrested. Eight of the arrested were wounded; two workers were killed (we repeat that all this is — exclusively telegraph reports from foreign newspapers, far removed from the truth and giving only an approximate idea of the scale of the battle). One respectable Belgian newspaper cites a report that janitors were busily occupied cleaning blood from the streets; this little detail — it says — speaks more than lengthy reports about the seriousness of the struggle.

Regarding the massacre on Tverskaya, it was apparently permitted to write in the Petersburg newspapers. But already the next day the censorship became afraid of publicity. From Monday, October 9 (September 26), official dispatches reported that there had been no serious disturbances in Moscow. But by telephone, different news reached the editorial offices of Petersburg newspapers. It turned out that a crowd had gathered again near the house of the governor-general. The clashes were fierce. The Cossacks fired more than once. When they dismounted to fire, their horses trampled many people. By evening crowds of workers filled the boulevards with revolutionary cries, with unfurled red banners. The crowd broke into bakeries and gun shops. In the end the crowd was dispersed by police. Many wounded. The central telegraph station is guarded by a company of soldiers. The bakers' strike became universal. Ferment among students is intensifying even more, gatherings are becoming even more numerous and revolutionary. The Petersburg correspondent of the Times reports on proclamations calling for struggle in Petersburg, on ferment among Petersburg bakers, on the appointment of a demonstration for Saturday, October 14 (1), on the extremely alarming mood in society.

However scanty these data may be, they nevertheless permit the conclusion that the outbreak of uprising in Moscow does not represent, in comparison with others, a higher stage of the movement. There is neither an appearance of combat detachments prepared in advance and well-armed, nor a transition to the side of the people of even certain military units, nor widespread use of the "new" types of popular weapons, bombs (which in Tiflis on October 9 — September 26 — caused such panic among the Cossacks and soldiers). In the absence of any of these conditions, it was impossible to count on either the arming of large numbers of workers or on the victory of the uprising. The significance of the Moscow events, as we have already noted, is different: they mark the baptism by fire of a major center, the involvement in serious struggle of an enormous industrial region.

The growth of uprising in Russia does not proceed, and cannot, of course, proceed by an even and regular rise. In Petersburg on January 9, the predominant feature was the rapid, unanimous movement of gigantic masses, unarmed and not going to struggle, but receiving a great lesson in struggle. In Poland and the Caucasus, the movement is distinguished by enormous persistence, the comparatively more frequent use of weapons and bombs by the population. In Odessa the distinguishing feature was the transition to the side of the insurgents of part of the military. In all cases and always, the movement was at its base proletarian, inseparably merged with mass strike. In Moscow... *) the movement proceeded within the same framework as in a whole series of other, less major industrial centers.

Now a question naturally arises before us: will the revolutionary movement stop at this stage, already achieved, become "usual" and familiar, or will it rise to a higher level? If one dares venture into the realm of evaluating such complex and vast events as the events of the Russian revolution, then we will inevitably arrive at an immensely greater probability of the second answer to the question. True, even the given, already "practiced," if one may so express it, form of struggle — partisan warfare, continuous strikes, wearing down the enemy with attacks and street struggles now in one place, now in another of the country — this too is a form of struggle that has given and gives the most serious results. No state can endure a la longue this stubborn struggle, which halts industrial life, introduces complete demoralization into the bureaucracy and army, sows discontent with the state of affairs in all circles of the people. All the less capable is the Russian autocratic government of enduring such struggle. We can be quite certain that the stubborn continuation of struggle even in only those forms already created by the workers' movement will inevitably lead to the crash of tsarism.

But the stopping of revolutionary movement in contemporary Russia at the stage already achieved by it now is highly improbable to the last degree. On the contrary, all the data speak rather to the effect that this is merely one of the initial stages of struggle. All the consequences of the shameful and ruinous war are far, far from having yet shown themselves fully to the people. The economic crisis in the cities, famine in the villages, terribly intensify embitterment. The Manchurian army, judging by all information, is extremely revolutionarily disposed, and the government fears to return it — yet it cannot help returning this army, under the threat of new and even more serious uprisings. Political agitation among the working class and the peasantry has never gone in Russia so widely, so systematically, and so deeply as now. The farce of the State Duma inevitably carries with it new defeats for the government, new embitterment in the population. The uprising has grown terribly before our eyes in the span of merely ten months, and it is not by fantasy, not by pious wishes, but by direct and obligatory conclusion from the facts of mass struggle that we arrive at the conclusion of the nearness of the rise of the uprising to a new, higher stage, when combat detachments of revolutionaries or mutinous military units will come to the aid of the crowd, when they will help the masses obtain weapons, when they will introduce the mightiest wavering in the ranks of the "tsar's" (still the tsar's, but already far from entirely the tsar's) army, when the uprising will lead to serious victory, from which tsarism will be unable to recover.

The tsar's troops won victory over the workers in Moscow. But this victory did not weaken the defeated, but only more firmly united them, more deeply sowed hatred, brought them closer to the practical tasks of serious struggle. This victory is of the kind that cannot fail to introduce wavering in the ranks of the victors. The army is only now beginning to learn, and to learn not only from consultation with laws, but from its own experience, that it is now being mobilized entirely and exclusively for struggle with the "internal enemy." The war with Japan has ended. But mobilization